• eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    this sounds like a nightmare without something like ubi; this is a society altering change and every time we lurch forward as a society like this, it’s been met with needless violence that gets resolved by a viable social safety net of some kind.

    we should skip directly to the cure than suffering through the symptoms and create something like ubi and $22 per hour waiting on tables is probably the most direct way of making that happen within the american system.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        indeed; this is at the exact heart of the matter.

        we wouldn’t need ubi if we lived in a society where people worked because they simply wanted to.

        and if only there was a certain group of people from the 19th century that had some astute observations and keen ideas about how we can revolutionize society. lol

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          2 months ago

          UBI is the wrong solution in general in my opinion. The proper approach is to have universal basic services. People should have access to all the basic needs provided unconditionally. I think it will be interesting to see how China will handle automation as it will definitively show whether it is moving towards communism or not. In a capitalist society, rapid automation would mean mass unemployment and economic strife. However, in a socialist society automation can simply translate into having a shorter work week.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      UBI on its own is a dead end under capitalism, because companies would raise the prices of good & services to absorb it, and real estate prices & rents would similarly go up to absorb it. And you know that other social safety nets would be dismantled, on the excuse that UBI serves as their replacement. Those social services would be privatized, making the situation worse.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        i don’t think that it’ll be ubi as we understand it today and i don’t doubt that they’ll enshitify it as much as possible into the future since i’m also aware that both social security and unemployment were half measures intended to deter neuter revolutionary thought within the united states during the last time we had to deal with major socioeconomic changes that was pushing the country leftwards.

        ubi (in whatever form it takes and at least at the beginning) will buy us time and i think that it’s a silver lining that helps alleviate the anxiety from knowing about the work that lays ahead of us when theory doesn’t provide needful encouragement; we’re human beings & americans so we need time to adjust to reality after we’ve been living in ignorance like this our entire lives and also to learn how to focus on the positives & victories no matter how small they seem to be right now.

        the theory i’ve “read” so far (not much yet) doesn’t address the humanity of what the person has to go through in order to leave plato’s cave and we’re going to need silver linings and laughter to get through another trump administration; just like we did the last time things looked this bad for us.